The Passive Voice

From Passive to Active Voice:

Researchers often find themselves in a position of “acting for” or “in the name of” individuals and communities whose voices have traditionally been muted or silenced. The passive nature of these muted or silenced voices prevents them from being heard, fully understood or appreciated. As true voices of participants emerge in research, so does a more representative view of individuals’ or commun...

Syntactic Feature of EFL Speakers’ Conference Presentations: The Case of Passive Voice and Pseudo-Cleft

Acquiring proficiency in academic genres is a key factor in research community. Among various genres in academic discourse communities, spoken genre, especially Conference Presentations (CPs), play a crucial role in research communities, though investigation on this important genre is in its infancy or is relatively under-researched. Therefore, the present study aims to shed light on the import...

Passive Voice in Narratives Describing Domestic Violence

Shorter articles and notes the interpretation of the passive voice

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In defense of the passive voice in medical writing.

Few medical journals specifically instruct authors to use the active voice and avoid the passive voice, but advice to that effect is common in the large number of stylebooks and blogs aimed at medical and scientific writers. Such advice typically revolves around arguments that the passive voice is less clear, less direct, and less concise than the active voice, that it conceals the identity of ...